How are your company’s IT needs being met? Are your devices running smoothly? Is your software the most effective solution for your business? Is downtime a concern?
Every business has unique needs. As businesses have always needed someone to handle the bookkeeping, today a business of any size has IT needs that have to be met for the business to run smoothly. This requires personalized IT solutions that work.
What Is Managed IT Services?
There are a few different options for handling your company’s technology needs.
One is to hire your own team of IT professionals and handle everything in-house.
Another is to hire an IT services company and pay them by the hour.
Then there is the option to hire a managed IT service provider. This may sound like the least cost-effective solution, but that is misleading. One of the major benefits is how cost-effective it can be to have a team of experienced professionals keeping your company’s technology running smoothly.
What makes hiring a managed IT service for your business an effective solution? When you hire a company to work hourly, they have less incentive to get the job done as well as possible. When a service provider is hired at a monthly rate, they are incentivized to keep your business running as smoothly as possible.
This means they have reasons to be more proactive. Your managed IT service provider will take the time to regularly review your systems and find potential problems before they happen. They will also make sure your software gets regular upgrades and receives warnings about potential problems with your hardware.
Hiring a quality IT specialist means someone has your company’s back, so you never need to worry about keeping your tech running smoothly.
What Kind of IT Services Solutions Are There?
The first big question is, “What is managed IT services?” Then, the question becomes what exactly they handle for your business.
Your business has unique IT needs. When you hire a professional company, they’re going to be working to oversee your network. This includes your servers, networked devices, and PCs. It also includes managed services software. A great managed IT service will be proactively looking out for your needs, which means 24/7 monitoring of your network, data backup so your intellectual property is safe, and cybersecurity services.
The Benefits of Managed IT Services for Businesses
Peace of mind is one of the best benefits for most businesses. Your data is safe. You are avoiding downtime. Your machines are always optimized to be running their best so your business can stay efficient. Knowing that your network is in good hands is hugely beneficial to many business owners.
The efficiency of hiring a managed IT service provider is another big reason small businesses choose to hire a service provider and keep them on year after year. When your network has any problems at all, the problem is passed off to another company. This means your employees don’t waste time on the issue. It is also efficient in that your network keeps running so your business is as efficient as possible.
Cybersecurity becomes a more advanced problem for businesses every year. Large companies, small businesses, and individuals are all at risk for cybersecurity threats. Having one solution to take care of this is a great advantage for many businesses.
This is a cost-effective solution. When considering the price of managed IT services for businesses, take into account the number of hours lost to downtime and how much your employees were paid during those hours when they couldn’t work. How much does it cost your business to be inefficient for even one hour? While this is more difficult to calculate, there is also the cost of having a system that isn’t as optimized as it could be. This is harder to recognize until a great specialist comes in and starts proactively changing the system to be more efficient.
Is your business staying ahead of the curve? Strategic choices for your company’s network are important. One could say that technology changes yearly, but the truth is that technology is changing greatly even faster than that these days. While for many things it may be fine to wait to upgrade, the benefits in some areas could greatly advance your business. It is difficult to know the difference. Are your printers the most effective solution for your business? Is that software helping you save time for your employees? How safe is your backup software? When you hire experts, they can guide you on these important decisions.
Your employees can stay on task. Not only because they don’t need to fix tech problems themselves, but because their devices will run more smoothly. As a business owner, you are paying for the hours your employees are there. When they fall off-task because of technology issues, you’re paying for that and losing the gains their productivity could have made for your business.
As previously mentioned, one of the biggest benefits of managed IT services for businesses is that your goals are aligned with the people taking care of your network. It is in their best interest to keep things running smoothly for you so that they have less work to do. This motivates them to be proactive and to find long-term solutions for troubleshooting issues, instead of using a tape and glue solution that would keep things running for the time being. It is easier for many businesses to trust a managed IT service provider that has the same goal: to keep the network running as smoothly as possible all the time.
How to Find the Right Managed IT Services for Your Business
What should you ask a company before hiring them to handle your company’s needs? As outlined above, the biggest benefits are all involved with trusting your network is in good hands. This means you need to find the right solution for your business.
When you consult an IT specialist, ask them about their plans for your business after they’ve done a review of your network. What do they think you’ll need to be doing in the coming year or two? This is an excellent question because it tells you more about how they understand your needs.
Learn about the company’s reputation. While every business is different, have they worked with any like yours? Do they have references? Of course, you can check for information online about this company to learn a lot about how they handle themselves and the reputation they’ve built.
Comprehensive IT Solutions
Is your network running smoothly? One of the major challenges for some business owners is understanding the larger picture of their network as a whole. When you consult an expert, you can gain sight of the big picture.
To gain a more comprehensive understanding of what’s possible for your company’s IT, schedule a free consultation with a solution specialist at Frontier Business Products today.